Heating hot water for brewing?

[DC]

Hi all, Just wondering which way people heat up there water for a brew day Is it stardard practice to calculate the total volume of water needed for mashing & sparging and then heat all of this water at the start of the brewing process Or is it a case of heating the mash water then doughin, then heat the 1st lot of sparge water and then sparge, then heat the 2nd lot of sparge water and do the 2nd sparge Sorry if this is a daft question but I thought I would just check

Cheers DC

[edit1now]

I heat the mash liquor in the mash tun and the sparge liquor in the HLT. I measure the mash liquor as it goes into the MT and note how much I pump out of the HLT. I should take up noticing how much I get at the start of the boil, and at the end, so I can get a reliable figure for my efficiency.

[adm]

Personally, I heat and treat all my water at once in the HLT - including my water for cleaning and sterilising.

If I'm doing a 23L brew, this means 50L of water gets heated, I use something like 36L during the brew and the rest gets poured into the sink after i've finished sparging and then steriliser added.

I do have the luxury of a timer and PID controlled HLT though, so I can just set it up at night so the water is at strike temp when i get up. It would probably take an unacceptably long time to get to temp otherwise.

[Eric]

A swift and idle way if you have a combi boiler.

For a typical brew, very roughly a third is needed for the mash and two thirds for sparging and I heat and treat them separately.
A couple of litres more than that needed for the mash goes straight from our hot tap into the boiler, water treatment added and heated to 80C.
The boiler is switched off and the required amount is dropped into an unmodified coolbox. The water is stirred and its temperature monitored while it drops to strike temperature.
The spare couple of litres of treated water are transferred to a pan and later heated for temperature top up, if needed, half way through the mash.
I batch sparge in an FV with strainer and tap, so after 90 minutes empty the coolbox's contents into the said FV.
Towards the end of the mash period, the second lot of hot tapwater is fed into the boiler, treated and raised to 80C, when the first batch of spargewater is added to the mash.
The remaining water, second sparge, in the boiler is then heated a little more and dropped into the now empty coolbox to keep it hot while the boiler is fitted with the hop filter and readied to receive the wort.

Because of good control in a modern combi, my water is up to temperature in very little time and the boiler in use for just two short periods. This has led to me getting dispensation to mash in the kitchen, going to the garage or outside for run off and boil.

[DC]

Hi Eric, Thanks for the reply/tips mate, I never even gave the combi boiler a 2nd thought I was just going to heat the water from the tap. But now I will crank up the combi temp and then heat my mash water (with a few extra litres) then do the same again for both the 1st & 2nd lots of sparge water.

Cheers DC

[Eric]

Hi DC, that way has worked for me, hopefully you'll have as much success. It certainly cuts time and energy costs.

I'd advise you first write down a procedure line by line. For example, it's easy to run the boiler down below the element without switching it off.
Another thing, if you use the kitchen, put some old towels or the like under the boiler and other items that get hot. My wife is still wondering what she's done to cause the new mark on the bench where I put the boiler after unnoticed it attached itself to a bit of brown sticky tape as I lifted it onto the worktop.

Good luck.

Eric.

[rick_huggins]

I've only done 1 AG but I boiled my mash liquor (10l, 9l required) then my sparge for the HLT 18l, but I made a mistake and should have done 27l

I'll do it in 2 stages again on Sat too..